Friday Facts #445 - The Biters Bite Back

[Jap2.0]

Wait, what happens if you kill the entire nest except ONE spawner? Will that one Spawner prevent expansions from forming nearby if you feed it enough ammunition to keep it from being a danger? aka Biter Zoo?

It WOULD make sense for players to actually do that at least to one of the nearby nests for glebic purposes

135083

I wonder how you solve a problem, at least for me. Many players switch on the chunkoverlay and place a pipe or something like that to prevent the biters from choosing this chunk for expansion. I would like to see this solved as the expansions are too easy manipulated in that way.

This hasn't really been the case for years; it takes many entities in a chunk to substantially reduce the probability of expansion there.

[Draxinusom]

I hope the new expansion planner does not mean that the old "victory poling" is back to manipulate it.
I mean the "trying to ensure that areas explored but otherwise untouched by the player" sounds like you could manipulate it easily but hopefully I'm just reading too much into it.

"Victory poling" Still exists though? If anything this sounds like it might mitigate it with biters ignoring places far away from the player forcing them to expand toward the player even if there are buildings lowering the likelihood of those chunks being selected.

The classic victory poling does not work anymore and hasn't for quite some time. It was that you went out, killed a nest and left behind the victory pole (I used wooden crates but others the wooden power poles, hence the name). This marked the whole chunk as "player built something here, so the entire chunk this is in is now marked ineligible for expansion". This is gone long now.

However, the wording for the new expansion planner being "trying to ensure that areas explored but otherwise untouched by the player" strongly imply that there is some rule after which an area is not just explored but also "touched" by the player and thus becomes ineligible for expansion. Whatever that rule is, this might open up a new victory poling strategy in which you do/build something that prevents biters to come nearer to your base. Once the distances of an area ineligible for expansion is too large, biters can never come to you as there is a max distance for expansion building.

So it wasn't meant as if the old victory poling could come back but a new tactic with similar intent and effect. Just for example, if the rule were that we need a powered structure to prevent the expansion planner from having eligible spots nearby. Then we could just put down a solar panel and an accumulator and now we would have biter free zones... hopefully this is not the case.

[silenceko]

Wait, what happens if you kill the entire nest except ONE spawner? Will that one Spawner prevent expansions from forming nearby if you feed it enough ammunition to keep it from being a danger? aka Biter Zoo?

It WOULD make sense for players to actually do that at least to one of the nearby nests for glebic purposes

135083

I wonder how you solve a problem, at least for me. Many players switch on the chunkoverlay and place a pipe or something like that to prevent the biters from choosing this chunk for expansion. I would like to see this solved as the expansions are too easy manipulated in that way.

This hasn't really been the case for years; it takes many entities in a chunk to substantially reduce the probability of expansion there.

really? I thought I have seen Michael Hendriks using this method not that long ago. But I hope you are right

[GregoriusT]

This hasn't really been the case for years; it takes many entities in a chunk to substantially reduce the probability of expansion there.

really? I thought I have seen Michael Hendriks using this method not that long ago. But I hope you are right

Yeah they should have said it as "ONE pipe? That's not enough, you need EIGHT pipes!"

As for the Bug Report there, I would leave the Biter nests alive because they dont have ranged attacks wrecking my Turrets like Spitters do.

That said. remember that people want to get the "no bases killed til artillery" achievement, so they cant just do that

[BHakluyt]

Absolutely love it! The biters can definitely ramp up to end game. I just made a 1000% size one spawn at 100% evolution for now, thats been a tiny dream of mine. I am working hard to finalize my "wishlist " and feedback all compressed into a semi working mod. Find it easier than a bunch of words. Hopefully that one will be FFF on next Friday? jokes.

You guys made an awesome awesome game and really your work ethic is inspiring ALWAYS!

#UPLINK-2-FACTORIO / #QuantumSurvival wink wink

[ProMeTheus112]

Very nice! You adressed everything I agree with, before expansions were rather an annoyance/chore to clean rather than a real threat, more difficulty and engagement with biters and their expansions is better, the size of them in early game was probably just a bit much in the last updates (DW), there was probably a bit too limited time to react to an expansion being built in DW, and more. Love it great job thanks keep the quality tuning where/if necessary/beneficial!

[bits-orio]

First of all, thank you. I have been turning off expansion in my games 100% of the time. These changes will make them an acceptable challenge.

> We could espouse the virtue of being vigilant with checking the map... but we have machines to do that for us. So we've added a new alert: if an expansion base (worm or spawner) is built in a chunk with active radar coverage, you'll receive the 'expansion base built' alert.

I have a custom version of radars, called passive radars that don't scan actively.

In those scenarios, if the player exposes a new area later in game by placing a forward radar, or by physically walking there, can we still see the 'expansion base built' icon to identify if a nest is one of the originals or an expansion nest?

[Ranakastrasz]

Any chance while you're at it, to make it so expansion units have to stand where a building is to be built, so that, a, it clearly mutates into the structure, and B, they can't teleport past cliffs?

that said, looks good. and I can just imagine Michel Hendricks having to find a new solution for his rediculous hardcore runs.

[Omnifarious]

I sort of re-invented "victory poling" except I use walls. And the goal isn't to make an area impossible to expand into, it's just to reduce the probability enough that a different area where I've defended much more heavily is chosen instead.

I like the new behavior. I always thought the really anemic expansion bases were kind of a problem.

IMHO, expansion parties shouldn't have to be larger in order to build a bigger base. And bases should recover themselves if they're left alone for awhile. When a base is created is should have a sort of ideal size, and if left alone for more than 5 minutes or so, should slowly rebound back to that size. And an expansion party should have that ideal size in mind when they go out to build a base, and so new biters spawned in by spawners built by the expansion party should also be able to build a spawner or worm.

[Omnifarious]

Any chance while you're at it, to make it so expansion units have to stand where a building is to be built, so that, a, it clearly mutates into the structure, and B, they can't teleport past cliffs?

that said, looks good. and I can just imagine Michel Hendricks having to find a new solution for his rediculous hardcore runs.

I strongly second the "teleport past cliffs" thing. That really bit me (pun intended) once or twice when I thought I had an impenetrable barrier someplace and it turned out it wasn't. Ideally (and this would be a lot of work) there would be a "transform into a fixed structure" animation.

[Stargateur]

Biters become Biter/Spitter spawners.
Spitters become Worms.

I instantly saw the problem coming Bitter could spawn biter, spitter could spawn spitter nest, and both of them could have like a 1/3 chance to build a nest this would work. But I think full random with ratio is just simpler and will work 100% of the time.

RIP Enemy Expansion Notifications

[GregoriusT]

I just realized something, the radars dont just check for the expansion party do they. They probably also check if the expansion chunk on the expansion overlay is flashing.

Would that mean that if the expansion party goes to the chunk and by chance ONLY puts nests on the chunks AROUND that chunk, that the alarm wont go off?

[Krissy]

The problem I saw wasn't that there was a 5 second delay between base building, it was that the cooldown happened before they moved into position to build.

The bitter would wait out the cooldown outside of turret range, run in and instant base.

I think the biter should have to move into position and then wait the five second cooldown. That way if they want to sneak up close they have to sit in firing range.

https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... ers_siege/

Granted, they shouldn't get that close anymore, but even so.